Social Media Marketing is a large part of Digital Marketing. With social media is constantly evolving and changing, your content and how you reach your audience has to adapt with these changes! Read on to discover the top ways to reach your audience with social media.
Keep on top of Social Media – Algorithms
What is an algorithm? The algorithm is a way of sorting posts based on relevance and time published. It decides what you see at the top of your feed and what you see lower down or not at all.
Before algorithms, most social feeds were displayed in reverse chronological order. In current times most algorithms are no longer showing ‘most recent’ but more so ‘most relevant’.
It is important to note that these algorithms are changing quite frequently so it’s very important to keep on top of these changes! Here we have listed some general algorithm strategies that can work across all social media channels.
- Include native video content into your strategy – this type of content is rewarded by algorithms across most platforms
- Use relevant hashtags – adding hashtags to a post helps to categorise it so users interested in that hashtag have a higher chance of seeing your post
- Encourage engagements – the more engagements the post gets, the more it will be rewarded by algorithms
- Optimise your posting time – if you’re posting when your audience is most likely to be active, there’s more chance they will see your post and engage with it
- Post frequently – algorithms tend to reward accounts that post regularly as the content is more likely to be relevant
Include live videos in your Social Media Strategy
Including live videos in your digital marketing strategy means that your followers can interact with your brand in real-time. They provide great brand insights and they help to show the people behind the brand. This will help followers and potential customers feel more comfortable interacting with your feed.
Not only do live videos offer transparency, but they can also help to increase reach, build customer relationships, and offer your followers insights into your brand. Live social media videos offer things that other content simply can’t offer.
Can live videos help increase sales?
Yes! They can help encourage or seal a sale by offering extra information. For example, a live video could; give instructions on how to use a product, talk or discuss a product or service, go behind the scenes, interact in real-time through a Q&A, follow a company event.
In short, live social media videos can help to build customer relationships, increase brand transparency, help build a community around your brand, and answer questions that could lead to a sale. These are the core targets of most Digital Marketing strategys.
Include Influencer Marketing in your Social media strategy
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is the process of identifying individuals who have the possibility to create high-impact conversations about your product. It’s important to select influencers carefully. Think about who you want to target. Is it your current audience or are you looking to target a new audience that would benefit from your product? It’s important to look at the influencers audience and see if it’s a good fit.
Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools and so collaborating with influencers is a great way to reach your target audience through the people they trust.
And that’s not all! It can help in other areas of your digital marketing strategy such as towards your SEO link-building efforts. The influencer may add your link to their post or blog meaning more inbound links for you.
Use your Social Media to build a community.
Allowing your customers to feel part of a community encourages bran advocacy. This is why this should be a key part of any digital marketing social media strategy.
There are many simple ways to do this such as creating a brand hashtag or a Facebook group. Your customer and audience can share content with you, and not only are you reaping the benefits of word of mouth marketing, but you’ll also be creating a community feel and be receiving content that you can use!
A great example of this is GoPro as almost all of their content is curated. As a result, they have created a community of loyal customers and brand advocates. If you look at GoPro’s brand hashtag on Instagram (#gopro), it has been used nearly 47 million times! That’s 47 million original pieces of content and 47 million pieces of word of mouth marketing. This can be used across other social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook.
Create interesting content and imagery.
Many brands fall short with social media as they believe that their followers just want to see their product when in fact, they want interesting and new content to engage with. In any digital marketing social strategy, it’s important to include other types of content for your audience to engage with.
RedBull does this brilliantly. In fact, almost all of their content is not product-based, yet you still know it’s RedBull. To achieve this, you should identifying your audience and think about their interests, then create new content around this. RedBull’s content is there to engage their specific audience and they have created a huge community of extreme sports lovers who are advocates of their brand.
Conclusion
Be sure to always research current trends when planning your digital marketing or social media marketing strategy. It’s important to be current and to produce content that it’s relevant to your audience. Also, remember to use social media channels that your audience uses! Consider channels such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Snapchat, YouTube, and Reddit. Decided which of these your audience is likely to use. You can find out more about digital marketing techniques or about the Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship here.